In France, it all comes down to Marine Le Pen

Just one week before presidential second and final round of election, one name on all French lips: Marine Le Pen.

4 minute read.

Marine Le Pen.
(photo credit: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)

Just one week before the presidential second and final round of the election, one name is on all
French lips: Marine Le Pen, the 43-year-old leader of the extreme right-wing
National Front party who will decide whom to support on May 6 – either Nicolas
Sarkozy, the outgoing president and candidate of the moderate-right party UMP
who has the support of 44 percent of the public according to the latest polls,
or his rival with 56% of the polls, the candidate of the Socialist Party
François Hollande.

The irony of the situation is that the name UMP, which
stand for “Union pour un Mouvement Populaire,” was given in 2002 to the moderate
right-wing party of former president Jacques Chirac in order to stop the rise of
National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father.

Today, the UMP
desperately needs the support of MLP (Marine Le Pen), in order to keep alive a
slim chance of winning, something that is far from being
acquired.

According to the daily paper Le Monde, just the opposite is
occurring, in that the strategy of the National Front is set to implode the
right-wing. There is a new electoral balance never before considered by the
extreme right-wing in the French political landscape. If their core support is
confirmed in the first round of the coming legislative elections, scheduled for
June 10, the National Front votes might be present in more than 350 of the over
500 election constituencies for the second round of these elections a week
later. The objective will be to destabilize the UMP, threatened by a record
number of three-way contests.

According to experts, the National Front is
succeeding in places outside the metropolitan areas. According to an analysis by
the emographers/geographers Hervé Le Bras and Jacques Lévy published in Le
Monde, “It is more than socioeconomic distinctions, or sociocultural ones; it is
the location of voter homes that seems to be the predictive element of the
political orientation. There is a radicalization: Refusal of the National Front
in urban zones and support outside them.”

This electoral geography
analysis explains why the National Front is marching toward the legislative
elections with confidence. It has a historical window to have its deputies
elected, and to fulfill its ambition to get at least 15 deputies, the minimum
number required to have a parliamentary group at the National Assembly. With
that in mind, the National Front is betting on the defeat of Nicolas
Sarkozy.

For the third and final round of the elections, the National
Front has decided to change its name to “Rassemblement Bleu Marine” (the Navy
Blue Union), despite the opposition of the father of the movement, Jean-Marie le
Pen.

“To abandon the name National means for the National Front to remove
their extremist image,” explained branding specialist Marcel Botton, adding that
“the blue remains a color associated with the right-wing and using a color name
as a brand name is more modern, as Orange has proven.”

Marine Le Pen
wants to get the most out of the dynamics of the presidential elections and to
“de-Frontize” her candidates, since the name National Front is quite unpopular,
so she can be pivotal in the future reconstruction of the
right-wing.

That’s why, between the two rounds, nothing will be done to
support Nicolas Sarkozy, the man that the National Front has always considered
as the main adversary, though she will not give any voting directives to her
supporters.

Those close to her have said it publicly: At the second
round, she will either abstain or vote with a blank ballot.

A
representative of the National Front, M. Philippot said: “We make no difference
between François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy; between now and May 6, we will be
in opposition to ‘Sarkhollande.’” Most experts agree that Marine Le Pen – who is
considered as “modern” by some of the younger generation, for whom Sarkozy is
the ‘President of the Rich’ – has everything to win by causing Sarkozy to
lose.

Even though she shares with him what he calls “the terrorism of the
media system” (the media in general is against both of them), she will then
become an opposition force that cannot be ignored. It seems likely that Tuesday,
at her rally on May 1 at Place de l’Opéra, she will call to cast a blank vote or
to abstain.

If the UMP does not “explode,” it will “go for a walk across
the desert,” but not disappear, since it is a redoubtable war machine whose star
leaders are already organizing their fight in the opposition.

“If the
left wins, there will be immigration with no control, a furious and crazy
recession in the economy; it is suicide for the country and shame in face of
Europe with the planned revision to the Treaty of Europe,” said Marine Le
Pen.

For Natasha, a 43-year-old supporter of Sarkozy from Noisy-le-Roi
near Versailles, “he is like Louis XVI, the only one to work, and he’s going to
have his head cut off and pay the price for the others.

Sites Of Interest

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